by Unknown
Those words were: Dale? Is that you?
He wanted to laugh at that now—oh God, he wanted it so badly. But a laugh would be wrong. It would be misguided. It would be fraudulent, worse than a lie. Because even a mild laugh would not in any way change what, for that one instant, he was certain he had seen.
That year a fierce, rainy spring had finally surrendered to a summer of almost unheard of heat. Temperatures in the nineties day after blistering day had driven them to the ravine more than ever before. It was better down there in that wild valley, sheltered at least a little from the merciless, unblinking eye of the sun and the brain-busting humidity.
On that particular day the game had been a northwoods variation on the old cowboys-and-Indians theme. True to form, it had started on a free and happy note, but had plummeted downhill rapidly.
The problem, of course, was Dale.
(Dale, whom Donnie loved.)
Dale who was tall and athletic.
(Dale, whom Donnie respected.)
Dale who could play baseball with the high school boys, despite the fact that he was only eleven, and who did better in school on his bad days than Donnie could ever hope to do
(Dale, whom Donnie idolized.)
Dale who had been his mother’s largest joy, who was still his father’s pride.
(Dale, whom Donnie envied.)
Dale who could never do any wrong.
(Dale, whom Donnie feared.)
Dale who always seemed to find the quickest way to spoil a good game, whether by obstinate bickering or by developing new rules in midstream or just by simple dictatorial domination.
Dale whom Donnie loved, and respected, and idolized, and envied, and feared.
And hated.
Dale.
He could not remember now precisely what had gone wrong that day. He could, however, remember the important parts—the two of them playing well together, wading across the river like true scouts from the John Wayne school, racing through the wilderness, and then later, finally, standing on the crest of the far slope, above the sharp rock wall and the water, screaming at each other.
“Your fault!” he yelled at Dale. “You always ruin it! You always mess things up!”
Dale only smiled, that infuriating smile that was an unmistakable feature of the patented Dale Stewart up-your-ass-kid-I’m-better-than-you expression. He reached down and gave Donnie a condescending pat on the head.
“Poor, misguided, demented little brat.”
“But you cheated! We had rules, pus bag! You’re a creep, you know it? You’re a snot-faced, nose-picking creep! I hope you die! I hope you rot! I hope you—”
Dale reached out with a lightning-stroke hand and slapped him across the face. His head rocked back and came forward sharply. His chin struck his chest. He began to cry.
“I’m going to tell Dad! You hit me! I’m going to tell on you!”
“Be my guest, brat. Dad won’t do anything to me. Jesus, you know that. He’ll blame it on you. He’ll say it was your fault. So go on, I’d like to see it. Run and cry to him, blow your nose all over his shirt. We’ll see what happens. Go on.”
And that was when the weakening thread of Donnie’s self-control snapped. It might have been the prosaic fact that yet another enjoyable game had been spoiled. Perhaps the humidity was working its dark, heavy magic on him. Most likely, it was the unavoidable realization that every single word Dale had just said was true. He didn’t know. He was beyond reasoning then, didn’t stop to question why, and later he could never be quite sure. The thread stretched … and stretched … and snapped. That was the only thing that really mattered.
He bent down and dragged a hand across the rocky hillside, coming back up with his lingers curled around a sharp and jagged stone that was roughly the size of the grapefruit their father favored for breakfast. Dale stared at the stone as thought it were a cheap toy. He began to laugh. The laugh had a taunting, frustrating ring to it, a horrible touch of mockery, an air of irrepressible snottiness.
“You cheated!” Donnie’s voice was high and hoarse and bitterly triumphant as he pronounced that verdict.
And then it was time for the sentencing.
He raised the rock and with one smooth motion leapt at his older brother. Dale’s eyes grew suddenly wide, comically startled. It was an expression Donnie cherished—but the moment was dreadfully short.
The rock in his hand came down. Hard. Oh Jesus, oh God, there was no denying that it came down hard.
Dale’s comical eyes rolled up in his head, the lids snapping shut like shades on a roller. And then he was gone, slumping, leaning, teetering, and tumbling down the rocky hillside, body crashing through the brambles like a sack filled with dead, very heavy weight.
Donnie stared in dawning horror as his brother’s body reached the bottom of the hilt and the lip of the rock Wall. It seemed to pause there for a heartbeat, but then it took flight, soaring up and out … up… and out.
It was that moment more than any other he would never forget—Dale in the air for an impossibly long time, completely limp, utterly out of control, sailing up and out … and then dropping.
He hit the river with a mighty splash.
Donnie screamed, “DAAAAAAAAAAAAALLE!” and took off down the side of the ravine, stumbling and sliding, scrabbling for handholds and footholds, almost out of control himself. His brother’s name broke out of his throat over and over, becoming one long, uninterrupted syllable, a wailing siren of pure panic.
He reached the rock wall and peered down, but Dale was not in sight. Running parallel to the rushing water, he came to their well-worn footpath, the one that bypassed the wall and zigzagged down a shallower embankment until it reached the shore. He raced down it, falling repeatedly, skinning his hands and knees, bloodying his nose, heedless of everything but getting to the river in time. He hit bottom and charged headlong into the water.
“Dale!” he cried again. “DALE!”
He struggled against the current and waded back to shore, then ran frantically up and down the bank like a frightened rabbit searching for a way across. His eyes darted left and right, searching, scanning. His older brother was nowhere. There was nothing there but an old log being churned downstream. There was just that, the log, swept along in the endless, furious flow.
The log.
The flow.
The tremendous rushing noise in Donnie’s ears. The empty river and his own bald panic.
After an unknowable time he forded across and ran for the cabin, ran screaming for his father to tell him there had been a terrible accident. They had been playing atop the far side of the ravine and somehow Dale had lost his balance. One slip and Dale was gone.
The underbrush flogged and flayed him as he charged homeward, but he ignored everything, kept running, kept screaming.
Oh Christ, he ran screaming.
Stewart blinked and stared at the trickling river and the rock wall behind. For a second there he had seen it all again, that picture of his older brother’s body suspended in the air, then dropping, crashing into the water and vanishing from sight forever.
He shuddered.
There had been many volunteers from the Falls and the neighboring town of Kelly’s Corners. They had searched the ravine and surrounding woods for days. (Twenty days? it might have been that long, perhaps even longer.) They had dragged the river all the way to the county line and beyond. No body had been round.
They were told to blame it on the current. The current could carry, something for weeks and weeks, miles and miles. The current could trap an object against an underwater obstruction and keep it down.
The current was a powerful, usually unbeatable three, especially when there had been such a rainy spring and the water on this branch of the Little Spruce. River was so high, so wickedly swill.
No body had been found.
That had been their last summer at the cabin. His father, barely recovered from the natural death of his wife two years before, could no longer
cope with the summer place. The cabin had been locked, the yard left to go wild, the woodlot left to grow and die and slowly rot.
Stewart turned away, suddenly wishing he had never taken the key from the lawyer and yet knowing that, all the saint, it made no difference. The memory was there anyway. It always was. Unacknowledged. it waited. Patiently it lingered. And in weak moments of drink or exhaustion or sleep or just plain boredom, it pounced—that stark mind-picture of Dale in the air.
He took a step in the direction of the cabin but hesitated almost immediately. There was something up ahead, at the verge of the trees. Somebody, staring at him.
This time there was no mistake.
“Dale,” he breathed.
The trees rustled. The somebody turned away. “Dale, Jesus, don’t run! Don’t go—”
But he stopped himself, because he was getting carried away again. Call it a guilt fantasy. Call it a mind ghost created by the long-buried, long.-hidden, long-unadmitted, long-kept-inside. Whatever the case, it hadn’t been Dale, any more than the thing outside the cabin had been. Oh, it had his brother’s face, but that face was pale and broken, lumpish, freakishly grotesque. It was his brother’s size, but the body was bent and twisted, cruelly deformed. And forty years had gone by … yes … his brother had been dead for almost forty years.
But there was something else that silenced him, too, that kept him from giving chase. It was the sound the thing had made, that weak, whimpering noise it had uttered as it turned away, like an old dog that was very, very sick, like something ancient and weary, drowning in despair.
He stood there, hugging himself but unaware that he was doing so, listening to its hasty retreat, catching glimpses of its white and naked form scrambling away through the brush.
There were glimpses of something else, as well, glimpses of the wild forest animals that scuttled along after the creature. It was a virtual parade of squirrels and rabbits, foxes and woodchucks and coyotes, waddling porcupines, wriggling badgers—fifteen or twenty wild things in all, following the leader.
Stewart groaned.
Then the thing was gone; the thing and its followers had vanished.
He stood there, catching his breath, dying inside, and finally left the ravine as quickly as he could.
He was almost running.
That afternoon he walked the three miles to the highway and hitched a ride into town. He returned several hours later with three purchases: more beer, a cheap plastic lawn chair from the Ben Franklin, and a shotgun with birdshot from one of the local sporting goods stores. As evening fell he took the chair and the beer and the shotgun out into the backyard and planted himself in the middle of the grassy sea, midway between the ocean and the rim of the ravine. He drank beer, watched the sun go down, kept the weapon across his lap, and waited.
Night came, the moon rose, yet he saw and heard nothing. He wasn’t deterred. Despite the beer coursing through his system, he felt sharply and wild, alert. He knew what he had to do. For his own good, his own safety, his own protection, his own sanity, he had to get the thing that was trying to fool him, trying to con him into believing it was his brother. You betcha, he thought.
You’ve got to get that liar, that trickster, that false sibling.
That’s the answer.
He waited.
It came at last, one our past midnight.
Hear heard it first, grappling up the slope, coming through the brambles. He straightened, every muscle and shred of tendon in his body stiffly complaining.
It finally appeared—a moonish face peering at him over the edge.
He raised the shotgun.
“C’mon out!” he called.
The face didn’t move.
“Hey, now! Come out where I can see you! Your game’s over!
Something in the face seemed to twitch slightly.
Stewart’s hands twitched on the shotgun.
And then the thing spoke to him, saying just a handful of indecipherable word sounds in a voice that was thick and crusty, dirty and old, gravel-filled.
Stewart gulped and choked. The shotgun slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground, clanking against a half full beer can and overturning it. His hands opened and closed, as though trying to wrap around the weapon he no longer held. He never bent to retrieve it His eyes never left the white and gleaming face.
The thing gargled out something else. Stewart felt his chest—constrict around a heart that was on fire with rushing blood and raging emotion.
“Dale,” he whispered.
The thing was silent, staring at him.
“Dale, oh God, I don’t … I mean I never—”
The thing’s hands suddenly appeared from below the rim, ghostly claws darting forward and back so quickly that Stewart thought he must have imagined the movement. There was something lying at the edge of the grass now, something the thing had put there for him, although he could not tell what it was,
“Dale—”
The thing grunted and turned to go.
“No, wait! Dale … please … you’ve got to listen to me.”
The thing hesitated.
“Jesus … aw, Jesus, Dale, it’s been so long since I could talk to somebody about this. I never … actually, I never talked to anyone. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone. How could I? And you … oh, Dale. I didn’t mean to … I never meant to—”
The thing cocked its head slightly to one side, listening as though it didn’t understand the words, couldn’t understand them. Stewart groped for something else, some way to bridge the gulf between them. He thought he saw (hoped he saw, prayed he saw) the creature’s eyes sparkling in the moonlight, a single bright drop highlighted on its misshapen cheek.
His own eyes filled with tears.
This time when the thing turned its back to him, it vanished quickly, dropping out of sight as though it had never existed at all. Stewart held his breath, distantly aware of that now familiar sound, those clumsy, blundering movements fading in the distance.
His mouth opened. No sound came out.
When the night was silent once more, he rose from the chair and walked slowly over to the ravine, stooping to retrieve whatever the thing had left there for him. His hands touched it and he felt a sharp jolt.
A photograph. An old black and white picture.
For a moment he thought it was the same photo he’d found when he’d arrived at the cabin, somehow, impossibly, risen phoenix-like from the ashes. He quaked with equal parts sorrow and terror before realizing that it was not the same picture at all. Close.
The same subject. The same year. But not the same photograph.
This one was faded, crusted with dirt, parts of it torn or eaten away by the time and dampness and, he thought, the touch of malformed hands that had taken it out often for study and remembrance.
“Oh God, Dale,” he breathed to the silent night and dark ravine, “Dale, believe me, I in so sorry …” But it was not enough.
At five minutes past sunrise Stewart walked again to the edge of the ravine. He was freshly showered and shaved, dressed in the inst change of clean clothes he had brought with him. A hundred yards behind, the cabin that had once belonged to his brother and now belonged to him was engulfed in hungry, greedy flames. The sky above was choked with clouds of smoke. It would bring people from town eventually, he supposed, but by that time it would he over. The cabin would be gone and all the memories would be dead.
He looked down and saw them wailing for him, his escort, the small cluster of forest animals. They seemed possessed of perfect patience, complete and utter calm. He smiled at them, a pure expression of acceptance and peaceful satisfaction.
It was time that voice had said to him. He had hidden for too long. He had stayed away. He had kept the truth inside, denying it. He had let their father die without knowing. He had let the world go on without hearing. Forty years. Four decades. Two score. Too long. He was overdue, so very long overdue, but now it was time. All secrets must be confronted a
ll truths must bespoken. All debts must be paid.
That’s what his brother had said to him, and of course he had really said none of those things, or if he had, they had been spoken in a dead language, in words beyond Stewart’s comprehension. But still he had heard them, and he had somehow translated them in his heart. He had understood.
The memories will be dead. The debt must be paid.
He looked to his right, toward an ancient, gnarled maple that grew at the edge of the hillside. There, high up the trunk, he had spiked a certain photograph on a bent and rusty nail. It was the photograph that he remembered Dale carrying with him everywhere in the pocket of his jeans—two boys, brothers, grinning brightly at the camera, the cabin in the background, and beyond that, two upright poles crossed with a willow branch above a pile of ancient mattresses.
The photograph, beyond the reach of the flames, fluttered in the breeze. The maple leaves rustled their secret messages around it.
For one last time Stewart saw a picture of Dale in the air—but not as he had been on that final day. Oh, no. This was a picture of Dale as he should be, Dale on the day they had high-jumped in the side yard. Dale soaring upward, almost flying, his back arched and his smile eternal, unbeatably dazzling, a thing of the gods.
Dale.
Reaching for the sky.
They were perfect, the memory and the remembering.
All debts must be paid.
A moment later he started down into the ravine.
TAKING CARE OF MICHAEL
J. L. Comeau
The “J” in J. L Comeau stands for Judy. She is a newer writer from Falls Church, Virginia, whose short stories have appeared in many small press magazines. She writes in a clear voice with a relentless eye for the grimmest details. “Taking Care of Michael” is another take on the whole sibling rivalry theme. It is also one of those stories that creeps up on you and takes a bite before you even realize you’ve been violated.